


In the Cold and Quiet

by Aila



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aila/pseuds/Aila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They couldn’t bury Tommy next to his mother, not after what was done to her grave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Cold and Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story deals with the terrible aftermath of death. I don’t want to make anyone feel worse, so don’t read this if you think it might trigger something. 
> 
> This piece basically came as a culmination of all my grief over fictional deaths. Though I know that it’s unreasonable to get so upset over something that isn’t real, sometimes there’s no helping the way you feel. What has always bothered me about death in fiction is the time-skip to the ‘juicy’ moments, straight from emotional death scene to the funeral scene. I wanted to explore a little bit of that in-between time. I also imagined that all the practicalities around a death would crumble in a situation where half a city has been destroyed and your dead friend is the son of someone everyone now hates. 
> 
> Although I know that the writers will make the effects of Tommy’s death an important part of Season 2, it hurts to know that his influence will fade in later seasons. We’ll see less of him in flashbacks and he’ll be mentioned less, which is only right because living with an endless grief isn’t healthy. Yet whenever a favorite character dies part of my fear is that they’ll be forgotten—maybe it reflects my own fear of disappearing after I’m gone, hopefully many years from now. Anyway, that is my very long explanation for what is a pretty short work of fiction. Feel free to nitpick away; I love constructive criticism and this is spectacularly unbetaed. Revisions make the writer!

They couldn’t bury Tommy next to his mother, not after what was done to her grave. The cemetery informed them that her elaborate headstone had been smashed, the flowers ripped from the ground. There has half an attempt to dig up her coffin, but the rage of the perpetrators had died out before they could get very far. You could see the gouges their hands had made in the soil, too full of anguish had they been to stop for a shovel on their way to the desecration. Oliver was still trying to get permission to reinter her on Queen property where she would be safer. The legal entanglements post-disaster were making it nearly impossible to get anything done. When the entire city was scrambling to recover what it could from the wreckage, who could spare the time for the monster’s dead wife? For the first time in Oliver’s memory the Queen name had no influence. He imagined that it never would again.

In the end Tommy had been buried where Oliver’s grave had once been. In a crazed corner of his mind Oliver felt that removing his own gravestone had caused all of this; if he had left it there he would have surely died instead of Tommy. Death had been waiting for him, and in escaping it he had condemned his best friend.

No one prepared you for the time between death and a funeral. No book Oliver had ever read, no movie he had ever seen fully illuminated those long hours. In the fictional world there was death, and then a pause before the scene reopened on the mourners in black. At least Oliver had some experience with this dark space few saw worthy of recording, and yet back then he had never left his father behind. After Tommy had passed Oliver had had scant moments to truly grieve. He had to make sure Felicity was safe, had to find his sister. There was no time to carry Tommy’s body from the wreckage, for if he saw the look on Laurel’s face he would be hard pressed to leave.

All he could do was pull Tommy free from the rebar and move him to a corner where there was no danger of falling debris, all while choking on the smell of blood and bile. Oliver had thought himself immune to the sickening scent of death and the damage a long sharp projectile could do to the human body, but he could not reconcile that knowledge with the sight of Tommy lying still and bloody before him. A sudden wave of sickness had almost overcome him, spots in his eyes and a rush of static through his ears. He ran from that place dizzy and graceless. He ran from the body of his best friend, loathing himself more and more with each step he took.

It was hours before he could return, having found his friends and family alive though shaken. If anyone thought he looked a wreck they need only look at the destruction around them to find the source. When he found Laurel and her father, only a block away from the CNRI, he forced a look joyous relief and asked “Laurel, are you alright? Did everyone make it out?” 

“Tommy!” she screamed, “he’s still in there, he’s trapped. Please, _please_ , someone save him.” She wasn’t even looking at him. Detective Lance had cuffed his own daughter and she was still trying to escape his embrace. How long had they been there—father refusing to unwrap his arms and daughter refusing to be moved further from the scene?

When Oliver ran into the building no one protested. It was beginning to burn now and he had to hold his breath under the burning doorway or suffocate. Tommy was where he’d left him, stiff and colder now despite the flames. He awkwardly lifted Tommy into his arms and wondered how it could be that someone with no advanced physical training, someone with such a sheltered life would end up the hero. With only a few short feet left to the doorway, Oliver had a sudden urge to stay, to burn alive rather than to face Laurel. But then he looked down at Tommy’s face and he couldn’t bear to let his friend burn with him.

Laurel didn’t understand at first, but when she did her body rocked in terrifying convulsions. Laurel shook, but it was Oliver who became hysterical. Adrenaline gone and finally able to hold Tommy like he’d wanted to, he sobbed as he’d never had before. Detective Lance had had to pull them into his cruiser with his strong, sure hands. All the way back to the Queen mansion Oliver and Laurel held Tommy in their laps, Laurel stroking his hair and Oliver hunched over his legs as though his own chest had been pierced.

Once home, they brought Tommy to the master bathroom on the second floor to wash the dust from his hair and the blood from his chest. Afterwards Laurel tenderly wrapped him in bandages and Oliver dressed him in clothes meant for a larger man. Tommy stayed there at the mansion, slowly rotting in the basement below with no mortician on hand until his impromptu funeral a few days later. It was like no funeral Oliver had ever seen. There were no flowers to be found in Star City, no caskets or tasteful pamphlets to memorialize his life. Just a plain wooden box nailed together by Detective Lance and small grouping of friends who could barely stand to look at one another. They all tried to honor him in turn, but the words choked in their throats and only silence remained. Oliver never knew he could feel so much guilt; guilt for Tommy’s death, guilt Laurel’s loss, guilt for his mother and guilt for his sister, guilt for being unable to give voice to his love for Tommy and leaving him in this cold and eerie quiet. Guilt knowing the last words he ever said to him had been a lie. 

In the coming months the FBI would turn over Tommy’s possessions, having examined every object for signs of criminal activity, having ripped open every envelope and pulled the stuffing from every pillow. Oliver was the recipient of all these tattered possessions left through Tommy’s will. At the back of one photo album he found his own memorial pamphlet from five years ago, noting that Tommy had given the eulogy.

Laurel was left all his earnings from Verdant, the only Merlyn money not seized by the government. She told Oliver that she wanted to build a new center in Tommy’s memory, but that they’d only burn it down. “What can I do, I don’t know what to do,” was all she could say for weeks.

You would think that no one could possibly make the pain of losing your best friend worse, how could such nothingness be multiplied? Oliver learned that it could when he saw how Tommy was reviled by the public. Half of Star City was sure he shared the blame and the other half thought his death was a sign of karma in spite of his innocence. None of them would ever understand that Tommy was a hero, a far more noble man than the Hood himself. He had never truly understood what weakness felt like until he realized that Tommy would be hated throughout all of history and there was nothing he could do to stop it. 

All Oliver could do now was make his lie to Tommy real, to be a hero, not a vigilante, to never take a life again even if it meant his own death.


End file.
